Materiality in research and didactics

The research group has two objectives: It explores materiality as a scientific focus in different disciplines and as a thematic focus and method in the didactics of social studies.

We want to develop different scientific approaches to how materiality mediates social relations and adaptations to environment and resources. We wish to develop interdisciplinary perspectives that can build didactics, that are emphasizing learning through hands-on-experience. Further, we want to use materiality as an approach to more abstract topics.

One example could be to follow a specific kind of material through its history, production, geographic distribution and global economics of power. By doing so, we want to develop didactic perspectives on materiality in history, geography and civics by interdisciplinary and interinstitutional cooperation with educational institutions and other educational arenas such as museums, collections and parks.

Making social studies engaging and inclusive is an important requirement for democratic education because it develops important skills for critical reflection. We suggest that materiality-oriented didactics can contribute to reduce failure rates in secondary school by engaging pupils with weak theoretical motivation.